


Two Suits

by laliquey



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8878510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laliquey/pseuds/laliquey
Summary: Adolescent!Jimmy & Chuck get identical Christmas gifts but use them in very different ways.





	

 

Chuck took his usual measured steps on the way home from school, his black oxfords finding a pattern between the sidewalk seams like a metronome of total correctness.

Other kids rode bikes to get home faster but Chuck found he benefited from a few extra minutes of neutral transition. He _loved_ school: authority, rules, punishment for those who strayed outside the lines...those were in place at home, too, but were tested and bent all too often by his younger brother. It was as if Jimmy were an experiment put on earth to test Chuck's patience, he thought for the millionth time, just as Jimmy zipped by on his Schwinn. Why were his backpack straps always so offensively asymmetrical?

"Race ya home, Chuckles!"

Chuck sneered and kept walking in an even way that would suit the older self that lurked inside him, the self that might one day have a massive Oak Park craftsman with a manicured lawn and perhaps a nice lady to share it with.

Far from that future castle was their dime-a-dozen brick house, stuffed between two others just like it on 55th, and he was barely in the front door when he heard Jimmy's up-and-down voice arguing with mom. How Chuck missed that one year when age caused their schools to separate, the good old days when he got home thirty minutes earlier and got mom all to himself. They sometimes had tea. Civilized conversation, even.

"What's going on?"

"Oh, look who's finally here!" Jimmy bent at the knees to illustrate being at the end of his rope. "Thanks for ending the longest five minutes of my life!"

Two big flat packages wrapped in the rich colors of Christmas lay on the dining room table, but it was so early they didn't even have their tree yet. Chuck divined that Jimmy wanted to open them now because his juvenile impatience wasn't fading with age. If anything, it was getting worse.

"It's barely December," he said. "We can't open these!"

"We can too, now that you're here."

Chuck looked to mom. This was insane; she indulged Jimmy all the time but surely his whiny-baby wiles couldn't trump a major religious holiday.

"Your aunt sent your Christmas presents early," she said. "And I say you can open them now."

How very unexpected. Chuck took the box tagged for him and it was heavier than it looked. "I wonder what it is?"

"Well, we can safely deduce it's not money," Jimmy said, giving his a halfhearted shake. "It's probably knitting. Really big knitting."

"How about you open them and find out?"

Jimmy tore at his package like an animal but Chuck treated the heavy department store wrapping paper with reverence. It meant a serious gift was in his hands, and to his great delight it was a suit: a smart navy blue wool blend with a crisp white shirt and plaid tie, all arranged like a flat and headless torso was wearing it in the box and looking damn good doing it.

"Aw!" Jimmy cried over his. "I don't wanna match Chuck!"

"Stop, now. You'll look nice," mom said.

Chuck didn't want to match Jimmy either, but was smug in the knowledge that his brother would either spill Kool Aid down the front of his or trade it away for a model airplane soon enough.

*

Mom had them don the suits for a pre-Christmas family portrait in front of the fireplace. Dad swore and tripped over the tripod five times before he got in the frame, and they ordered two sheets of wallet size from the Photomat to clip and enclose in holiday cards.

"The pictures came today," mom said one afternoon after school. "You can look at them but don't get fingerprints on them."

Chuck carefully slid the glossy sheet from its envelope and liked most of what he saw. Mom and dad looked like themselves and he looked regal and right at home. Jimmy looked like a baby devil with a crooked smile, mugging for the camera as hard as he could.

He waved the sheet at Jimmy, but carefully so the photo paper wouldn't bend. "Look at you. You look like a used car salesman. Nice smile, James."

Jimmy gave it a look. "Thanks, Charles. You look like a mortician. See, I can play that game, too. 'Fact, I think I look pretty good. I might wear that dumb suit more often."

*

December gave way to a brutally cold January. Chuck's winter recreation was reading Milton in his favorite living room chair, and one weekend his periphery picked up on a steady stream of kid traffic venturing through the side gate. Jimmy had a million friends but this was unusual - his social activities were usually away from the house, and why would anyone be interested in their frozen backyard this time of year?

Fifteen minutes and several kids later he decided to investigate.

A path trod into the snow ended at the metal shed that dad painted to match the house. There were faint voices inside, and Chuck slid the steel door open an inch and peered inside.

A warm puff of air brushed against his face, thanks to the old space heater's orange coils heating the shed. The garage shoplight hung from a nail on the ceiling and four boys sat on the family's canvas camp chairs with a playing cards between them on a cardboard box table. The old blue and green shower curtain was tacked up in one corner and Jimmy, the ringleader, was there wearing his suit.

Chuck opened the door all the way. "What the hell is going on here?"

Jimmy looked surprised at first, then took a step toward him with the fluid swagger of an adult. "Watch the language," he said. "This is a classy joint."

"Really, Jimmy? You're calling our shed a classy joint?"

"Well, yeah. I know it's a little rough now, but Tim Saginowski's making us a craps table in woodshop." He sidled close enough to whisper. "The house takes a good percentage and I can cut you in if you get some of the guys in your grade to stop by. More discretionary income and all."

"Does mom know you're out here?"

"No," Jimmy whispered. "And I'll make it worth your while if she continues to not know, okay?"

A kid peeked out from behind the shower curtain; the corner was lined with makeshift racks stocked with dirty magazines from dad's store.

"Oh my God." Chuck's adrenaline surged. "You're gonna get in so much trouble..."

"No. No! Hey Chuck, you can look at 'em too, if you want. If you think about it, I'm providing anatomy lessons to the ignorant."

"Oh really. How?"

"Two days ago Tim thought girls pee out their butts and now he knows where all the holes are. I'm providing a valuable service, here!"

That was it. "I'm telling mom."

_"I'm telling mom,"_ Jimmy mocked in singsong, then panicked when Chuck stalked off. "Abort! Abort! We'll settle up later!" The camp chairs clattered to the floor and the kids pushed past Chuck in their hurry to flee and he stalked back to the house, arm crossed tight.

Mom was in the kitchen, squeezing another coat of ketchup on a par-baked meatloaf. "You need something, honey?"

"Mom, Jimmy's running a casino and maybe a brothel or something in the backyard shed."

She _laughed._ Times like this Chuck wished he'd been adopted but they all looked too much like each other for it to be true; this plague was in his bones. "Mom, it's not funny! He stole dirty magazines from the store and he's taking kids' money. It's disgusting."

She clicked her tongue in a maddening _tsk._ "Jimmy wouldn't know the first thing about dirty magazines."

"I'm afraid he does. Go look and see."

It moved something in her face, perhaps the terror that her littlest boy might actually grow up one day. The meatloaf went back in the oven and she tugged on a button-up; Chuck followed her out back, scared and exhilarated as he crunched through the snow behind her. This could be it. The end of Jimmy's stupid reign and a return to culture and sense.

The shed door screeched aside. The shoplight was still lit, but the shower curtain and magazines were gone and the card table box was upright with the camp chairs stacked on top. The space heater was face-down on the plywood floor and a slight burnt scent tinged the air.

"Are you responsible for this, Chuck?."

"I wasn't even out here, mom. Jimmy did it."

"Well, I don't see him anywhere." She tipped the space heater face-up and spun to find the outlet. "Wherever this is plugged in, unplug it this instant. You're lucky nothing caught fire."

Chuck sheepishly followed the cord to a side wall behind the lawnmower. "Mom, I swear he was just here! With a bunch of his yard ape friends."

_"Tsk."_ She looked around the shed for other things to find wrong. "Your father would not appreciate this."

_"I_ don't appreciate this!" he said, and had no choice but to follow her back into the house.

They found Jimmy sprawled across his bed sorting baseball cards. He'd somehow gotten into regular clothes in the last two minutes and Chuck looked for clues, like a sheen of sweat or the crumpled tie, but he saw nothing.

"Jimmy, were you out in the shed just now?"

"No ma'am."

"So you don't know anything about the space heater being left on out there?"

His innocence was maddening, and completely convincing. "No."

"Chuck seems to think you were out there with your friends."

"All my friends are right here," he said, and fanned out a royal flush of Cubs players.

"Alright. Carry on."

"Thanks, mom. By the way, dinner smells great already."

"Thank you, sweetheart."

She hustled Chuck out and he kept a wide distance so she couldn't yank his ear. "Mom..."

"I won't mention this to your father," she said on her way downstairs. "But you need to think long and hard about this. You could've burned the house down."

The warm, loving mother he used to have tea with was cold as snow, and he hated her, a little, but hated Jimmy far more. Smug in his bedroom with his stupid baseball cards...it was tempting to burn them, but he'd just cry to dad and get new ones.

"You know what, Jimmy?" he predicted from the doorway. "One day this'll all catch up with you and when we're grown ups, mom and dad are gonna come over to my house for every holiday. They won't be at yours because you either won't have one or you'll be in jail."

"Maybe," Jimmy gave a casual shrug. "Or maybe I'll have a mansion on the beach in Hawaii and they'll want to come see me."

Ugly shirts and coconut bras...how very gauche. How perfectly fitting. "It's sad that you believe that. I feel sorry for you," he said, and went to his own room before Jimmy could spit out some smartass comeback.

There was slight solace in the math of measured breaths and Chuck reminded himself that Jimmy's cuteness wouldn't last forever and that's when _he_ would finally get the recognition he was due. He was bright and polite in a way that boys his age never were. Jimmy couldn't touch his grades, and no matter what happened, Chuck would always be older and wiser.

Older and _better.  
_

If living well was the best revenge, then that was exactly what he'd do.


End file.
